You are here:

You’ve been on one too many long-distance, overnight hellish African bus journeys when…

Posted by steve on 26/11/2011

African bus drivers must also be able to be African bus mechanics.

You’ve been on one too many long-distance, overnight hellish African bus journeys when…

You think it utterly reasonable that your driver can pilot an unroadworthy 25-year-old bus for 12 hours straight on medieval roads through pitch darkness with coffee and God as his only sustenance.

At the infrequent toilet breaks you no longer walk miles from the bus for an inkling of privacy – a few metres at most suffice, maybe half a step more for a ‘number two’.

The rancid food thrust up into your window by small children on the roadside at breaks now seems not only nutritious but genuinely tasty. “Yum, that two-week-old, over-cooked sweaty meat thingy on a branch looks vaguely life sustaining. Two for me, please.”

You correctly translate ‘superfast’ or ‘express’ to mean “brace, brace, brace”. You know when the bus is about to strike something by the different pitch of the emotive horn, ranging from “get out of my way, I’m bigger than you and my brakes went long ago” to “kiss your arse goodbye.”

You have accepted that ‘luxury’ bus service means only that you will have most of a small cramped seat to yourself with probably only a few people leaning on you. You are an expert on why the ex-Chinese government bus you’re travelling on is about to break down.

ESP-like you’ve discovered that mechanical smells, mystery puddles of fluid and crunching sounds communicate with (and through) you directly. Exorcist-like you will scream out “leaf springs” or “universal joint” even if you don’t know what they look like. In short, you have become fluent in the language of dilapidation.

When the bus inevitably breaks down it will be fixed on the spot, over a period of many, many hours, or it will be left there forever. The replacement part will usually be on board because the old one was probably making a cacophonous grinding sound when you left. There is no replacement bus – you are already on it.

You know to add 50 per cent to your promised journey time; hence, 12 hours instantly becomes 18 hours. This is still a ballpark figure, at the whim of your driver, God, road conditions and police check point captains. The bus’s suggested passenger capacity should be multiplied by two and a half and even this is open to creative stacking allowances.

You’ve ceased to openly laugh at bus company names. What time is Air Jordan due? A little after Baby Coach arrives probably. Pictures of Bin Laden, Bob Marley, Wayne Rooney decorating the same bus also no longer seem incongruent, just a sign of ‘glo-bus-isation’.

You are resigned to the fact you will never get a refund for poor service, cancellations or break-downs because you don’t own a high-powered weapon.

You’ve stopped resisting when people from other seats open and close your window or draw curtains on your behalf. They, obviously, are far more attuned to the local temperature than you.

You realise that clichés of chickens clucking and flapping uncontrollably around African buses are so ‘yesterday’ The ‘restrained rooster rule’ means that all livestock shall be bound by the legs and placed in the luggage space provided or nursed by chicken owner. Bound goats will be placed under the bus or tethered to the overhead luggage racks, where upon the passengers will laugh at its bleating, thinking how human the noise sounds.

Steve Madgwick

Inspiring Blog Archive

Suddenly I come to the delicious realisation of exactly what I am doing. I am walking down a white sand beach, barefoot, heading towards two wooden dhow boats that less than three minutes ago floated past me in the sea more …